Koch, Robert (1843–1910)

Robert Koch is considered one of the founders of modern bacteriology and a key contributor to the etiology of diseases, along with Louis Pasteur. He isolated several disease-causing bacteria, including those for anthrax (1877), tuberculosis (1882), and cholera (1883), and developed Koch's postulates criteria for ascertaining the microbial causes of a specific disease.

Robert Koch was born in Clausthal, Germany, in 1843, one of 13 children. He received a medical degree from the University of Go¨ttingen in 1866. Following this, Koch served as a physician in several German towns, was a field surgeon during the 1870 to 1872 Franco-Prussian war, and then became a medical officer in Wollstein, Germany. It was during this latter part of his career that Koch did most of his research, in ...